Tales from Dickens by Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tales from Dickens,

by Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives,

Illustrated by Reginald B. Birch

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Title: Tales from Dickens

Author: Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

Release Date: September 28, 2009 [eBook #30127]
Most recently updated: December 27, 2012

Language: English

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Cover —Tales from Dickens

David Copperfield and his friend, Mr. Micawber

See page 112

TALES

FROM DICKENS

By

HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES

Author of

The Castaway, Hearts Courageous

A Furnace of Earth, etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

REGINALD B. BIRCH

INDIANAPOLIS

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1905

The Bobbs-Merrill Company

November

TO

GEORGE BAKER ROBBINS, JR.

CONTENTS

CHARLES DICKENS
1

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

I Little Nell
19

II The Wanderers
26

III The Search
35

OLIVER TWIST

I How Oliver Came to London and What He Found There
49

II Oliver's Adventures
58

III How Everything Turned Out Right for Oliver in the End
65

BARNABY RUDGE

I Barnaby's Boyhood
77

II The Mysterious Stranger and Who He Was
83

III Barnaby Gets Into Trouble
89

IV Barnaby Prospers at Last
95

DAVID COPPERFIELD

I David's Early Ups and Downs
105

II Little Em'ly
115

III David and His Child-Wife
120

IV David Finds All Well at Last
124

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I Pip and the Convict
131

II The Queer Miss Havisham
138

III Pip Discovers His Benefactor
147

IV Pip Comes to Himself
152

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

I Nicholas at Dotheboys Hall
161

II Nicholas Becomes an Actor
167

III Nicholas Comes to Kate's Rescue
171

IV What Happened to Everybody
175

DOMBEY AND SON

I Little Paul
183

II How Florence Lost Her Father
191

III How Florence Reached a Refuge
199

IV How Florence Found Her Father at Last
203

THE PICKWICK PAPERS

I The Pickwickians Begin Their Adventures. They Meet Mr. Alfred

Jingle, and Winkle Is Involved in a Duel
213

II Tupman Has a Love-Affair With a Spinster, and the Pickwickians

Find Out the Real Character of Jingle
218

III Mr. Pickwick Has an Interesting Scene With Mrs. Bardell, His

Housekeeper. Further Pursuit of Jingle Leads to an Adventure at a
Young Ladies' Boarding School
224

IV Sam Weller Meets His Father, and the Pursuit of Jingle Is Continued.

Mr. Pickwick Makes a Strange Call on a Middle-Aged Lady in
Yellow Curl Papers
230

V The Pickwickians Find Themselves in the Grasp of the Law. The

Final Exposure of Jingle, and a Christmas Merrymaking
233

VI The Celebrated Case of Bardell Against Pickwick. Sergeant Buzfuz's

Speech and an Unexpected Verdict
238

VII Winkle Has an Exciting Adventure With Mr. Dowler, and With the

Aid of Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller Discovers the Whereabouts
of Miss Arabella Allen
242

VIII Mr. Pickwick's Experiences in the Debtors' Prison, Where He Finds

an Old Enemy and Heaps Coals of Fire on the Head of Mrs.
Bardell
248

IX Snodgrass Gets Into Difficulties, But Wins His Lady-Love. The

Adventures of the Pickwickians Come to an End
252

LITTLE DORRIT

I How Arthur Came Home from China
261

II The Child of the Marshalsea
266

III What Riches Brought to the Dorrits
274

IV What Happened to Arthur Clennam
280

V "All's Well That Ends Well"
284

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT

I How Martin Left England
295

II Pecksniff and Old Chuzzlewit
302

III Jonas Gets Rid of an Enemy
308

IV What Came of Martin's Trip to America
313

V Old Chuzzlewit's Plot Succeeds
318

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

I What Happened to John Harmon
325

II Lizzie Hexam and the Dolls' Dressmaker
332

III The Rise and Fall of Silas Wegg
337

IV Bella and the Golden Dustman
343

V The End of the Story
348

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

I How Lucie Found a Father
357

II Darnay Caught in the Net
367

III Sydney Carton's Sacrifice
375

BLEAK HOUSE

I The Court of Chancery
383

II Lady Dedlock's Secret
390

III Little Joe Plays a Part
398

IV Esther Becomes the Mistress of Bleak House
405

HARD TIMES

I Mr. Gradgrind and His "System"
413

II The Robbery of Bounderby's Bank
420

III Harthouse's Plan Fails
427

IV Stephen's Return
432

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

I John Jasper
441

II The Coming of Neville Landless
444

III The Choirmaster's Dinner
449

IV Jasper Shows His Teeth
455

INDEX TO CHARACTERS
463

TALES FROM DICKENS

CHARLES DICKENS

Charles John Huffham Dickens, the master story-teller, was born in Landport, England, February 7, 1812. His father
was a clerk in one of the offices of the Navy, and he was one of eight children.

When he was four years old, his father moved to the town of Chatham, near the old city of Rochester. Round about are
chalk hills, green lanes, forests and marshes, and amid such scenes the little Charles's genius first began to show itself.

He did not like the rougher sports of his school-fellows and preferred to amuse himself in his own way, or to wander
about with his older sister, Fanny, whom he especially loved. They loved to watch the stars together, and there was one
particular star which they used to pretend was their own. People called him a "very queer small boy" because he was
always thinking or reading instead of playing. The children of the neighborhood would gather around him to listen while
he told them stories or sang comic songs to them, and when he was only eight years old he taught them to act in plays
which he invented. He was fond of reading books of travel, and most of all he loved The Arabian Nights and
Robinson Crusoe.

He had a great affection for Chatham and Rochester, and after he began to write stories that were printed, he often
used to put these places into them. It was at Chatham that poor little David in the story, David Copperfield, lay down
to sleep when he was running away from London to find his aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood. It was to Rochester that Mr.
Pickwick in Pickwick Papers, rode with Jingle. Rochester was really the "Cloisterham" where the wicked choir master,
John Jasper, killed his nephew, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And it was in those very marshes near by, that
Magwitch, the escaped convict in Great Expectations, so frightened little Pip. It is easy to see that the young Charles
Dickens noted carefully and remembered everything he saw, and this habit was of great use to him all his life.

These happy years were not to last long. When he was nine years old, his father became poor and the family was
obliged to move to London, where it lived in a shabby house in a poor suburb. Before another year had passed, his
father was put into prison for debt—the same prison in which Little Dorrit, in the story of that name, grew up. A very
bitter period followed for the solitary ten-year-old boy—a time in which, he long afterward wrote, "but for the mercy of
God, he might easily have become, for any care that was taken of him, a little robber or a little vagabond." The earlier
history of David in David Copperfield is really and truly a history of the real Charles Dickens in London. He was left to
the city streets, or to earn a hard and scanty living in a dirty warehouse, by pasting labels on pots of blacking. All of this
wretched experience he has written in David Copperfield, and the sad scenes of the debtors' prison he has put into
Pickwick Papers and into Little Dorrit. Even Mrs. Pipchin, of whom he told in Dombey and Son, and Mr. Micawber
in David Copperfield, were real people whom he knew in these years of poverty and despair. Dickens's life at this time
was so miserable that always afterward he dreaded to speak of it, and never could bear even to walk in the street
where the blacking warehouse of his boyhood had stood.

Better days, however, came at last. He was able to begin school again, and though the head-master was ignorant and
brutal (just such a one as Mr. Creakle in David Copperfield) yet Dickens profited by such teaching as he received.

After two or three years of school, he found employment as clerk in a lawyer's office. This did not content him and he
made up his mind to learn to write shorthand so as to become a reporter, in the Houses of Parliament, for a newspaper.
This was by no means an easy task. But Dickens had great strength of will and a determination to do well whatever he
did at all, and he succeeded, just as David Copperfield did in the story.

And like the latter, too, about this time Dickens fell in love. He did not marry on this occasion, as did David, but how
much he was in love one may see by the story of David's Dora.

The theater had always a great attraction for Dickens. Throughout his life he loved to act in plays got up and often
written, too, by himself and his friends. Some of his early experiences of this kind he has told in the adventures of
Nicholas Nickleby at Mr. Crummles's theater. But his acting was for his own amusement, and it is doubtful if he ever
thought seriously of adopting the stage as a profession. If he did, his success as a reporter soon determined him
otherwise.

When he was twenty-one he saw his first printed sketch in a monthly magazine. He had dropped it into a letter-box with
mingled hope and fear, and read it now through tears of joy and pride. He followed this with others as successful,
signed "Boz"—the child nickname of one of his younger brothers. This was his beginning. He was soon on the road to a
comfortable fortune, and when at length Pickwick Papers appeared, Dickens's fame was assured. This was his first
long story. It became, almost at once, the most popular book of its day, perhaps, indeed, the most popular book ever
published in England. Soon after the appearance of its first chapters, Dickens married Miss Catherine Hogarth,
daughter of the editor of one of the London newspapers, who had helped him in his career.

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Many have tried to explain the marvelous popularity of Pickwick Papers. Certainly its honest fun, its merriment, its
quaintness, good humor and charity appealed to every reader. More than all, it made people acquainted with a new
company of characters, none of whom had ever existed, or could ever exist, and yet whose manners and appearance
were pictured so really that they seemed to be actual persons whom one might meet and laugh with anywhere.

With such a success, and the money it brought him, Dickens had leisure to begin the wonderful series of stories which
endeared him to the whole English-speaking world, and made him the most famous author of his day. Oliver Twist
came first, and it was followed by Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop.

In the first two of these stories one may see most clearly the principle that underlay almost all of Dickens's work. He
was never content merely to tell an interesting story. He wrote with a purpose. In Oliver Twist that purpose was, first,
to better the poorhouse system, and second, to show that even in the lowest and wickedest paths of life (the life
wherein lived Fagin with his pupils in crime and Bill Sikes the brutal burglar) there could yet be found, as in the case of
poor Nancy, real kindness and sacrifice. In Nicholas Nickleby the purpose was to show what terrible wrongs were
done to children in country schools, numbers of which at that time were managed by men almost as cruel and inhuman
as was Squeers in the story. It is good to learn that, as a result of this novel, an end was made of many such boys'
schools. True artist as he was, Dickens seldom wrote without having in his mind the thought of showing some defect in
the law, or some wrong condition of affairs which might be righted. No one could read Pickwick Papers or Little
Dorrit without realizing how much wrong and misery was caused by the law which made it possible to throw a man into
prison for debt. Nor can one read Bleak House without seeing that the legal system which robbed quaint Miss Flite of
her mind and kept poor Richard Carstone from his fortune till the fortune itself had disappeared, was a very wrong legal
system indeed. Often, too, Dickens's stories are, in a sense, sermons against very human sins. In The Old Curiosity
Shop it is the sin of gambling which brings about the death of Little Nell. In Great Expectations it is the sin of pride
which Pip has to fight. In Martin Chuzzlewit the evil and folly of selfishness is what Dickens had in mind.

With his increasing wealth, Dickens had, of course, changed his manner of life. He lived part of the time in the country
near London, in Brighton, in Dover, and in France and Italy. He liked best, however, a little English watering place
called Broadstairs—a tiny fishing village, built on a cliff, with the sea rolling and dashing beneath it. In such a place he
felt that he could write best, but he greatly missed his London friends. He used to say that being without them was "like
losing his arms and legs."

The first great grief of his life came to him at this time, in the death of his wife's sister, Mary Hogarth, a gentle, lovable
girl of seventeen. No sorrow ever touched him as this did. "After she died," he wrote years afterward, "I dreamed of
her every night for many weeks, and always with a kind of quiet happiness, so that I never lay down at night without a
hope of the vision coming back." Hers was the character he drew in Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. When he
came to the part of the story which tells of Little Nell's death, he could scarcely write the chapter. When he ended it he
said, "It seems as though dear Mary died but yesterday."

When he was less than thirty, Dickens was invited to visit Scotland, and there he received his first great national tribute.
A public banquet was given him in Edinburgh, and he was much sought after and entertained. Up to this time he had
never seen the United States; he decided now to visit this country and meet his American readers face to face.

He landed at Boston accompanied by his wife, in 1842, and visited many of the greater cities of the Eastern states.
Everywhere he was counted the guest of the nation, and the four months of his stay were one continual welcome.
Unfortunately, however, Dickens had taken a dislike to American ways, and this dislike appeared in many things he
wrote after his return to England. The pictures he drew of American life in Martin Chuzzlewit were both unjust and
untrue, and made him for a time lose a large part of the good opinion which American readers had had for him. Dickens
soon came to regret the writing of these chapters, and when, twenty-five years later, he visited the United States a
second time, he did all in his power to show his kindly feeling, and America admired and loved him so much that it
gradually forgot the incident in the great pleasure with which it read his stories.

Dickens was a very active man, and his life was simple and full of work and exercise. He rose early and almost every
day might have been seen tramping for miles along the country roads, or riding horseback with his dogs racing after him.
He liked best to wander along the cliffs or across the downs by the sea. When he was in London he often walked the
streets half the night, thinking out his stories, or searching for the odd characters which he put in them. This natural
activity and restlessness even led him sometimes to make political speeches, and finally to the establishment of a new
London newspaper—the Daily News—of which he was the first editor. Before this, he had started a weekly journal, in
which several of his stories had appeared, but it had not been very successful. It was not long before he withdrew also
from this second venture.

In the meantime he had met with both joy and sorrow. Several children had been born to him. His much loved sister, his
father, and his own little daughter, the youngest of his family, had died. These sorrows made him throw himself into his
work with greater earnestness. He even found leisure to organize a theatrical company (in which he himself acted with a
number of other famous writers of the time), which gave several plays for the benefit of charity. One of these was
performed before Queen Victoria.

People have often wondered how Dickens found time to accomplish so many different things. One of the secrets of this,
no doubt, was his love of order. He was the most systematic of men. Everything he did "went like clockwork," and he
prided himself on his punctuality. He could not work in a room unless everything in it was in its proper place. As a

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consequence of this habit of regularity, he never wasted time.

The work of editorship was very pleasant to Dickens, and scarcely three years after his leaving the Daily News he
began the publication of a new magazine which he called Household Words. His aim was to make it cheerful, useful
and at the same time cheap, so that the poor could afford to buy it as well as the rich. His own story, Hard Times, first
appeared in this, with the earliest work of more than one writer who later became celebrated. Dickens loved to
encourage young writers, and would just as quickly accept a good story or poem from an unknown author as from the
most famous.

It was while engaged in this work that Dickens wrote the best one of all his tales—David Copperfield, the one which is
in so large a part the history of his own early life.

This book brought Dickens to the height of his career. He was now both famous and rich. He bought a house on Gad's
Hill—a place near Chatham, where he had spent the happiest part of his childhood—and settled down to a life of
comfort and labor. When he was a little boy his father had pointed out this fine house to him, and told him he might even
come to live there some day, if he were very persevering and worked hard. And so, indeed, it had proved.

Perhaps it is in connection with this house on Gad's Hill that the world oftenest remembers Dickens now. Everyone, old
and young throughout the neighborhood, liked him. Children, dogs and horses were his friends. His hand was open for
charity, and he was always the champion of the poor, the helpless and the outcast. Everyone, he thought, had some
good in him, and in all he met he was on the lookout to find it. The great purpose underneath all his writings was after all
to teach that every man and woman, however degraded, has his or her better side. So earnest was he in this that he was
not pleased at all when a person praised one of his stories, unless the other showed that he had grasped the lesson that
lay beneath it. The text of Dickens's whole life and work is best expressed in his own words: "I hope to do some solid
good, and I mean to be as cheery and pleasant as I can." The wrongs and sufferings of the young especially appealed to
him, and perhaps the most beautiful speech he ever made was one asking for money for the support of the London
Hospital for Sick Children. He spoke often in behalf of workingmen, and once he spoke for the benefit of a company of
poor actors, when, unknown to him, a little child of his own was lying dead at home.

With such a tender heart for all the world, he was more than an affectionate father to his own children, and gave much
thought to their happiness and education. In order that they should properly learn of their own country, he went to the
labor of preparing a Child's History of England for them, and at another time he wrote out the story of the Gospels, to
help them in their study of the New Testament. As the years went by, his letters to his oldest son told of his own work
and plans. When his youngest son sailed away to live in Australia, he wrote: "Poor Plorn is gone. It was a hard parting
at the last. He seemed to me to become once more my youngest and favorite child as the day drew near, and I did not
think I could have been so shaken."

When he moved to Gad's Hill it seemed as though Dickens had gained almost all of the things men strive most for. But
he was not to be happy there—nor, perhaps, was he ever again to be really happy anywhere. He and his wife were
very different in all their tastes and habits, and had never loved each other as well as people should when they marry.
Perhaps, after all, it would have been better if in his youth he had married his Dora—the one whom he had pictured in
the love-story of David Copperfield and his child-wife. But, however this may be, Dickens and his wife had not lived
happily together, and now decided to part, and from that time, though they wrote to each other, he never saw her again.
It is sad to reflect that he who has painted so beautifully for others the joys and sorrows of perfect love and home, was
himself destined to know neither.

The years that followed this separation were years of constant labor for Dickens. His restlessness, perhaps also his lack
of happiness, drove him to work without rest. He wrote to a friend: "I am quite confident I should rust, break and die if
I spared myself. Much better to die doing." The idea of giving public readings from his stories suggested itself to him,
and he was soon engaged in preparation. "I must do something," he wrote, "or I shall wear my heart away." That heart
his physician had declared out of order, and this effort was destined to wear it away in quite another sense, though for
some time Dickens felt no ill effects.

He gave readings, not only in England, but also in Scotland and Ireland, and everywhere he met with enormous success.
The first series was hardly over, when he was at work on a new story, and this was scarcely completed when he was
planning more readings. The strain of several seasons of such work told on his health. A serious illness followed, and
afterward he was troubled with an increasing lameness—the first real warning of the end.

In spite of his weakness, he decided on another trip to America, and here, in 1867, he began a series of readings which
left him in a far worse condition. Often at the close of an evening he would become so faint that he would have to lie
down. He was unable to sleep and his appetite entirely failed him. Yet his wonderful determination and energy made
him able to complete the task. A great banquet of farewell was given to him in New York and he returned to England
bearing the admiration and love of the whole American people.

Before leaving England he had promised to give one other course of readings there, and this promise, after a summer's
quiet at home, he attempted to fulfil. But he was too ill. He found himself for the first time in his life feeling, as he said,
"giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight, and tread and touch, and dull of spirit." He was obliged to
discontinue the course and to rest.

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This summer of 1869—the last summer of his life—was a contented and even a happy one. At home, at first in London,
and later in the house on Gad's Hill, surrounded by his children and by the friends he loved best, Dickens lived quietly,
working at his last story which his death was to leave for ever unfinished—The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He
attempted one more series of readings, and with their close bade farewell for ever to his English audience.

He was seen in public but a few times more—once at the last dinner party he ever attended, to meet the Prince of
Wales and the King of the Belgians, and once when the Queen invited him to Buckingham Palace. Soon after, the end
came.

One day as he entered the house at Gad's Hill, he seemed tired and silent. As he sat down to dinner all present noticed
that he looked very ill. They begged him to lie down. "Yes, on the ground," he said—these were the last words he ever
uttered—and as he spoke he slipped down upon the floor.

He never fully recovered consciousness, and next day, June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens breathed his last. Five days later
he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, where are buried so many of the greatest of England's dead. For days,
thousands came to visit the spot, and rich and poor alike looked upon his grave with tears.

Hallie Erminie Rives.

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THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

Published 1840

Scene: London and Neighboring Towns

Time: 1840

CHARACTERS

"Little Nell"
An orphan girl

Mr. Trent
Her aged grandfather

Proprietor of "The Old Curiosity Shop"

"The Stranger"
Mr. Trent's brother

Christopher Nubbles
Little Nell's friend and protector

Known as "Kit"

Quilp
A dwarf

Mrs. Quilp
His wife

Mrs. Jarley
Proprietress of "Jarley's Waxwork"

Brass
A dishonest lawyer

Sally Brass
His sister

Dick Swiveller
Brass's clerk

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

I

LITTLE NELL

In a narrow side street in London there once stood a shabby building called The Old Curiosity Shop, because all sorts
of curious things were kept for sale there—such as rusty swords, china figures, quaint carvings and old-fashioned
furniture.

A little old man named Trent owned the shop, and he looked as old as anything in it. He was thin and bent, with long
gray hair and bright blue eyes, and his face was wrinkled and full of care. He had an orphan grandchild who lived with
him—a pretty little golden-haired girl whom every one called Little Nell, who kept the shop clean and neat and cooked
the meals just as a grown woman would have done. She slept in a back room in a bed so small it might almost have
been a fairy's. She lived a very lonely life, but she kept a cheerful face and did not complain.

She had only one protector besides her grandfather, and that was a big, awkward boy named Christopher Nubbles,
called Kit for short. He had a very large mouth and a turned-up nose, and when he spoke he had a habit of standing
sidewise and twisting his head back over his shoulder. Everything he did seemed funny, and little Nell laughed at him all
the while, though she loved him almost as much as she did her grandfather. He ran errands for them, and in the long
winter evenings she used to teach him to read and write.

Kit liked to be taught and even liked to be laughed at, and always ended by laughing himself, with his mouth wide open
and his eyes shut. He was the best-natured lad in the world, and would have given his life to make little Nell happy.

She was not as happy as she seemed to her grandfather's eyes. There was some mystery about the old man that she
could not understand. Almost every night he left her to go to bed all alone in the shop, and went away and did not come
back till sunrise, when the door-bell woke her and she let him in.

And, too, he always talked of the great fortune she was to have sometime—if only some mysterious plan he was
working on turned out right—the carriages and fine frocks and jewels. But the plan seemed always to go wrong, and
the poor old man grew sadder and sadder as he grew more feeble.

Often at night little Nell sat at the upper window, watching for him, crying, and fearing that he might die or lose his mind;
she never knew that Kit used to stand in the shadow of an archway opposite and watch to see that no harm came to
her, till she vanished and he knew she had gone to bed.

What troubled little Nell most of all was a strange visitor her grandfather used to have. This was a hideous man named
Quilp, with the body of a dwarf and the head of a giant. His black eyes were sharp and cunning, his face was always

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covered with a stubby beard and he had a cruel smile that made him look like a panting dog. He had grizzled, tangled
hair, crooked finger nails, and wore a dirty handkerchief tied around his neck, instead of a collar. He used to bring
money to her grandfather, and little Nell more than once saw him look at her and at the contents of the shop in a
gloating way that made her shiver.

Indeed, everybody who ever met Quilp was afraid of him, and most afraid of all was his wife. He had a habit of
drinking scalding tea and of eating boiled eggs, shell and all, that quite terrified her. Besides, he treated the poor woman
cruelly. Sometimes, for instance, when she displeased him, he made her sit bolt upright in a chair all night, without
moving or going to bed, while he sat smoking and making faces at her.

Little Nell often had to carry messages from her grandfather to the dwarf, and came to know that he had somehow
fallen into Quilp's power.

The fact was that the old man had been borrowing money from the dwarf for a long time, and had spent it on the great
plan, which he had thought sure to succeed, and he now owed the other much more than all the shop and everything in
it was worth.

Quilp had loaned the money because he thought when the wonderful plan succeeded he would make the grandfather
give him back very much more than he had loaned him. But when the old man continually wanted to borrow more
money and yet paid none back, the dwarf grew suspicious and tried hard to find out what the great plan was. To do this
he used to question little Nell and try to persuade her to tell how her grandfather passed the time.

She would never tell him anything, but one day, when she had brought a message to his house, the dwarf hid in a closet
and listened while the child told his wife how her grandfather, every night after Quilp had brought him money, went out
and did not come home till daybreak, and always sadly then. You see, little Nell was in such trouble that she had to tell
somebody about it and ask advice, and the dwarf's wife had always been very kind to her.

When Quilp heard the story he guessed the secret—that her grandfather, hoping to win more for little Nell, had
gambled away all the money. He was full of rage and sent word that he would loan no more.

The old man was in great grief at this. His mind had not been strong for a long time, or this foolish and wrong plan
would never have misled him, and now, at the thought that he would have no more chance to win the fortune for his
grandchild, he fell ill. The child did her best to comfort him, but he told her that if Quilp deserted them they would be no
better than beggars.

"Let us be beggars then, and be happy," said little Nell, putting her arms around his neck. "I would rather beg than live
as we do now. If you are sorrowful now, let me know it. If you are weaker, let me be your nurse. It breaks my heart to
see you so and not to know why. Let us leave this place and sleep in the fields in the country and never think of money
again, and I will beg for us both."

Neither had heard the dwarf, who had stolen into the shop behind them. Little Nell shrieked when she saw him, and her
grandfather sent her into her own room.

"So that is the way all the money I have loaned you has gone!" sneered Quilp. "Your precious scheme to make a
fortune was the gaming-table!"

The old man cried out at this, trembling, that he had done it all for little Nell; that he had never staked a single penny for
himself, or without praying that it might win for her good. He told how he had begun gambling months before, knowing
he must soon die, hoping thus to leave her enough to live on; how, after losing all his own savings, he had borrowed and
lost all that, too. And he begged the dwarf to loan him a little more so that he might tempt luck again.

Any one but Quilp would have pitied the poor old man, but not he. He refused, and thinking of a lie which would make
the other yet more miserable, he told him as he left that it was Kit who had told him where the money was going.

The first Kit knew of this was that night when little Nell came to tell him her grandfather was very ill, and that he raved
continually against Kit so that he must never come to the shop again. Kit was stupefied at this, but there was no help for
it, so little Nell went sorrowfully back alone.

The Old Curiosity Shop belonged to the dwarf now and he at once moved into the parlor. He took little Nell's own bed
for himself and she had to sleep on a pallet on the floor up stairs. She was busy nursing her grandfather, for he was very
ill for some time, and she scarcely ever came down because she was so afraid of the dwarf.

Quilp was waiting for the old man to die, thinking that then he would have the shop for his own, and meantime he did a
hundred disagreeable things, such as filling the house with strong tobacco smoke from a big pipe he used all the time
and driving every one away who came to ask how the sick man was. He even drove off Kit when he came below the
window to beg little Nell to come and bring her grandfather to live at his own mother's house.

The old man would certainly have died if little Nell had not nursed him so faithfully, all alone, till he grew better and at
length was able to sit up.

But it was a bitter thing to live as they did, and one day little Nell begged her grandfather to come away with her—to
wander anywhere in the world, only so it was under God's sky and away from every one that pursued them—and he

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agreed.

So that night they dressed and stole down stairs very quietly in order not to waken the dwarf who was snoring frightfully
in the back room, and went through the shop to the front door. The bolts were rusty and creaked loudly, and, worst of
all, they found the key was not in the lock. Little Nell had to take off her shoes and creep into the back room to get it
out of the dwarf's pocket.

She was terribly frightened at the sight of Quilp, for he was having a bad dream, and was hanging so far out of bed that
he was almost standing on his head; his ugly mouth was wide open, and his breath came in a sort of growl. But she
found the key at last, and they unlocked the door and came safely into the dark street.

The old man did not know where to go, but little Nell took his hand and led him gently away.

II

THE WANDERERS

It was a bright June morning. They walked through many city streets, then through more scattered suburbs, and at last
came to the open country. That night they slept at a cottage where the people were kind to them, and all the next day
they walked on and on.

At sunset they stopped to rest in a churchyard, where two men were sitting patching a Punch-and-Judy show booth,
while the figures of Punch, the doctor, the executioner and the devil were lying on the grass waiting to be mended.

The men were mending the dolls very badly, so little Nell took a needle and sewed them all neatly. They were delighted
at this, and took the pair to the inn where they were to show the Punch-and-Judy, and there they found them a place to
sleep in an empty loft.

The next day the wanderers went on with the showmen. Whenever they came to a village, the booth was pitched and
the show took place, and they never left a town without a pack of ragged children at their heels. The Punch-and-Judy
show grew tiresome, but the company seemed better than none. Little Nell was weary with walking, but she tried to
hide it from her grandfather.

The inn at which they lodged the next night was full of showmen with trained dogs, conjurers and others, hurrying to a
town where there was to be a fair with horse-races, to which the Punch-and-Judy partners were bound, and little Nell
began to distrust their company.

To tell the truth, the others believed the child and the old man were running away from their friends, and that a reward
might be obtained for giving them up. The way in which the men watched them frightened little Nell, and when they
reached the scene of the fair she had determined to escape.

It was the second day of the races before a chance came, and then, while the showmen's backs were turned, they
slipped away in the crowd to the open fields again.

These alarms and the exposure had begun to affect the old man. He seemed to understand that he was not wholly in his
right mind. He was full of the fear that he would be taken from her and chained in a dungeon, and little Nell had great
trouble in cheering him.

At evening when they were both worn out, they came to a village where stood a cottage with the sign SCHOOL in big
letters in its window. The pale old schoolmaster sat smoking in the garden. He was a sad, solitary man, and loved little
Nell when he first saw her, because she was like a favorite pupil he once had. He made them sleep in the school-room
that night, and he begged them to stay longer next day, but little Nell was anxious to get as far as possible from London
and from the dwarf, who she was all the time in fear might find them. So they bade the schoolmaster good-by and
walked on.

Another day's journey left them so exhausted they could scarcely keep moving. They had almost reached another
village when they came to a tiny painted house on wheels with horses to draw it. At its door sat a stout lady wearing a
large bonnet, taking tea with a big drum for a table.

The lady, as it happened, had seen them at the fair, and had wondered then to see them in company with a Punch-and-
Judy show. Noticing how tired they were, she gave them tea and then took them into the wagon with her to help them
on their way.

The inside of the wagon was like a cozy room. It had a little bed in one end, and a kitchen in the other, and had two
curtained windows. As the wheels rattled on the old man fell asleep, and the stout lady made little Nell sit by her and
talk. In the wagon was a big canvas sign that read:

JARLEY'S WAXWORK

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ONE HUNDRED FIGURES

THE FULL SIZE OF LIFE
NOW EXHIBITED WITHIN

"I am Mrs. Jarley," the woman said, "and my waxwork is gone to the next town, where it is to be exhibited." She
thought little Nell and her grandfather were in the show business, too, and when she found they were not, that they had
no home, and did not even know where they were going, she held up her hands in astonishment.

But it was easy to see that they were not ordinary beggars, and she was kind-hearted and wanted to help them. So,
after much thought, she asked little Nell if they would take a situation with her. She explained that the child's duty would
be to point out the wax figures to the visitors and tell their names, while her grandfather could help dust them.

They accepted this offer very thankfully (for almost all the money they had brought was now spent), and when the
wagon arrived at the place of exhibition and the waxwork had been set up, Mrs. Jarley put a long wand in little Nell's
hand and taught her to point out each figure and describe it:

"This, ladies and gentlemen," little Nell learned to say, "is Jasper Packlemerton, who murdered fourteen wives by
tickling the soles of their feet," or, "this is Queen Elizabeth's maid of honor, who died from pricking her finger while
sewing on Sunday."

She was quick to learn and soon became a great favorite with the visitors. Mrs. Jarley was kind, and but for the fact
that her grandfather's mind failed more and more every day little Nell would have been quite happy.

One evening the two walked into the country beyond the town and a sudden thunder-storm arose. They took shelter at
an inn on the highroad, and while they waited there some rough men began a noisy game of cards behind a screen.

The talk and the chink of the money roused the old man's failing senses. He imagined himself still gambling to win the old
fortune for little Nell. He made her give him the money she had earned from the waxwork, joined the gamblers and in a
few hours had lost it all. His insanity had made him forget the presence of the child he so loved, and when the game was
done it was too late to leave the inn that night.

Little Nell had now only one piece of money left, a gold piece sewed in her dress. This she had to change into silver and
to pay a part for their lodging. When she was abed she could not sleep for fear of the wicked men she had seen
gambling.

When at last she fell asleep she waked suddenly to see a figure in the room. She was too frightened to scream, and lay
very still and trembled. The robber searched her clothing, took the rest of the money and went out. She was dreadfully
afraid he might return to harm her. If she could get to her grandfather, she thought, she would be safe.

She opened the door softly, and in the moonlight saw the figure entering the old man's room. She caught a view of his
face and then she knew that the figure was her own grandfather, and that, crazed by the gambling scene, he himself had
robbed her!

All that night little Nell lay and cried. She knew, to be sure, that her grandfather was not a thief and that he did not
know what he was doing when he stole her money; but she knew, too, that if people found out he was crazy they would
take him away from her and shut him up where she could not be with him, and of this she could not bear to think.

The next day, when they had gone back to the waxwork, she was in even greater terror for fear he should rob Mrs.
Jarley, their benefactress. So, to lessen the chance of this, each day she gave him every penny she earned. This, she
soon knew, he gambled away, for often he was out all night, and even seemed to shun her; so she was sad and took
many long walks alone through the fields.

One evening it happened that she passed a meadow where, beside a hedge, a fire was burning, with three men sitting
and lying around it. She was in the shadow and they did not see her. One, she saw, was her grandfather, and the others
were the gamblers with whom he had played at the inn on the night of the storm.

Little Nell crept close. They were tempting the poor daft old man to steal the money from Mrs. Jarley's strong box, and
while she listened he consented.

She ran home in terrible grief. She tried to sleep, but could not. At last she could bear it no longer. She went to the old
man's room and wakened him.

"I have had a dreadful dream," she told him, "a dream of an old gray-haired man like you robbing people of their gold. I
can not stay! I can not leave you here. We must go."

To the crazy old man she seemed an angel. He dressed himself in fear, and with her little basket on her arm she led him
out of the house, on, away from the town, into the country, far away from Mrs. Jarley, who had been so kind to them,
and from the new home they had found.

They climbed a high hill just as the sun was rising, and far behind them little Nell caught a last view of the village. As she
looked back and thought how contented they had been there at first, and of the further wandering that lay before them

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now, poor little Nell burst into tears.

But at length she bravely dried her tears lest they sadden her grandfather, and they went on. When the sun grew warm
they fell asleep on the bank of the canal, and when they awoke in the afternoon some rough canal men took them
aboard their dirty craft as far as the next town.

The men were well-meaning enough and meant the travelers no harm, but after a while they began to drink and
quarreled and fought among themselves, and little Nell sat all night, wet with the rain, and sang to them to quiet them.

The place to which they finally came was a town of wretched workmen who toiled all day in iron furnaces for little
wages, and were almost as miserable and hungry as the wanderers themselves. No one gave them anything, and they
lived for three days with only two penny loaves to eat (for all their money was now gone), and slept at night in the ashes
of some poor laborer's hut.

The fourth day they dragged themselves into the country again. Little Nell's shoes were worn through to the bare
ground, her feet were bleeding, her limbs ached and she was deadly faint. They begged, but no one would help them.

The child's strength was almost gone, when they met a traveler who was reading in a book as he walked along. He
looked up as they came near. It was the kind old schoolmaster in whose school they had slept before they met Mrs.
Jarley in her house on wheels. When she saw him little Nell shrieked and fell unconscious at his feet.

The schoolmaster carried her to an inn near by, where she was put to bed and doctored under his care, for she was
very weak. She told him all the story of their wanderings, and he heard it with astonishment and wonder to find such a
great heart and heroism in a child.

He had been appointed schoolmaster, he told her, in another town, to which he was then on his way, and he declared
they should go with him and he would care for them. He hired a farm wagon to carry little Nell, and he and the old man
walked beside it, and so they came to their new place.

Next door to the school-house was the church. A very old woman, nearly a hundred years old, had lived in a tenement
near by to keep the keys and open the church for services. The old woman was now dead, and the schoolmaster went
to the clergyman and asked that her place be given to the grandfather, so that he and little Nell could live in the house
next to his own dwelling.

The child sewed the tattered curtains and mended the worn carpet and the schoolmaster trimmed the long grass and
trained the ivy before the door. In the evening a bright fire was kindled and they all three took their supper together, and
then the schoolmaster said a prayer before they went gladly to bed.

They were very happy in this new home. The old man lost the insane thirst for gaming and the mad look faded from his
eyes, but poor little Nell grew paler and more fragile every day. The long days of hunger and nights of exposure had
sowed the seeds of illness.

The whole village soon grew to love her. Many came to visit her and the schoolmaster read to her each day, so that she
was content even when she could no longer walk abroad as she had always done.

As she lay looking out at the peaceful churchyard, where so many whose lives were over lay sleeping, it seemed to her
that the painful past was only an ugly vision. And at night she often dreamed of the roof opening and a column of bright
faces, rising far into the sky, looking down on her asleep. The quiet spot outside remained the same, save that the air
was full of music and a sound of angels' wings.

So the weeks passed into winter, and though she came soon to know that she was not long for earth, she thought of
death without regret and of heaven with joy.

III

THE SEARCH

It is not to be supposed, of course, that the flight of little Nell and her grandfather from the Old Curiosity Shop was not
noticed. All the time, while they were wandering about homeless and wretched, more than one went searching
everywhere for them without success.

One of these was Quilp, the ugly dwarf. He had loaned the grandfather more money than the shop would bring, and he
made up his mind now that the old man had a secret hoard somewhere, which might be his if he could find it. He soon
learned that if Kit knew anything about it he would not tell, so he and his lawyer (a sleek, oily rascal named Brass)
made many plans for finding them. But for a long time Quilp could get no trace.

Another who tried to find them was a curious lodger who roomed in Brass's house. He seemed to have plenty of money
but was very eccentric. Nobody knew even his name and so they called him The Stranger.

He kept in his room a big box-like trunk, in which was a silver stove that he used to cook his meals. The stove had a lot

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